The husband of Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman sentenced to hang for ‘apostasy,’ has been prevented by prison authorities from visiting his wife and newborn child, after she gave birth in prison on Tuesday. 

Daniel Wani told Radio Tamazuj in an interview today that he was not yet allowed to visit his wife Meriam Ibrahim, 27, who gave birth in the early hours of Tuesday, a month before her due date.

“I was not allowed to go in. I did not see her,” said Daniel Wani.

Ibrahim was jailed after a Sudanese court declared her marriage to Wani invalid, on the grounds that she was Muslim and had married a Christian man.

The court also sentenced her to hang for apostasy. Ibrahim denied the charges, telling the court she had been brought up as a Christian after her father left when she was six, and refusing to renounce her faith.

Amnesty International reported that Ibrahim’s lawyer was also denied access to her.

According to the sentence passed on Ibrahim by Judge Abbas Mohammed Khalifa, she will be hanged within 26 months, after weaning her child.

However, the ruling will be appealed. State television have stressed that Judge Khalifa’s ruling was only a first stage in the judicial process.  

Courtesy photo